Fight Test: local union rep talks of opposition to MMA in New York

The Times Union chose the 2010 contest between Randy Couture and Mark Coleman as one of their highlight pics, which is unfortunate because that fight was pretty terrible.

James Odato has the story in today’s paper:

The reason for the technical knockout, according to officials with Ultimate Fighting Championship, the group behind competitions, is retaliation from organized labor. UFC’s officers say Unite Here, the powerful hotel workers’ union, is sending a message to owners of a string of Las Vegas hotel casinos, who own controlling interest in UFC. Brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertita. of Station Casinos, own UFC through parent company Zuffa LLC. A Las Vegas union local reached out to its New York brothers to make sure that mixed martial arts never gets to the floor the Assembly because the Fertitas run one of the largest non-union gambling enterprises in the nation, said Lawrence Epstein, UFC’s executive vice president.

“The hotel workers union are the only anti group,” he said.

Josh Gold, of the Hotel Trades Council, of which Unite Here is a member, says it has fought the legislation in Albany because the sport doesn’t offer fighters protections from “unscrupulous promoters” and “exploitive” contracts. Its opposition memo only names UFC and none of the other operators who could bring more than 100 fights to New York’s auditoriums annually. That might not be surprising given UFC is the most active industry representative pushing for the bill.

This goes against what many have insisted, which is that the blockage is merely a matter of concern over safety and culture.

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Also, “Fight Test” is the first track of the Flaming Lips’ album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.” This was brought to you by Aliceperson, who on Friday donated $25 to Special Olympics in exchange for me sneaking a “Flaming Lips” song title into a sports-related blog post. For more information on our Stuntraising efforts for the Special Olympics, please click here.

ALSO: that video I talked about on Friday? Well life, a bad sunburn, and Captain America got in the way of that happening that weekend. I will put it together as soon as I can and post it.